Wonderland was S.A.'s largest mall in '61

Updated 12:08 am, Sunday, May 20, 2012

An undated postcard depicts the once and future Wonderland mall at Fredericksburg Road and Loop 410.

An undated postcard depicts the once and future Wonderland mall at Fredericksburg Road and Loop 410.

Photo: Courtesy Martin Delfin

Wonderland was S.A.'s largest mall in '61

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We are in the middle of a big debate on the San Antonio page on Facebook over the attached picture — when it was taken, from what angle and where Rhodes, Pancho's, Montgomery Ward's and Tandy's were located. I barely remember Handy Andy being there. Can you lend us a hand? This snap apparently is a postcard.

The mall now known as Wonderland of the Americas, formerly Crossroads mall, originally the Malls of Wonderland Shopping City, opened Sept. 14, 1961, at Fredericksburg Road and Loop 410, a setting often described as “suburban.” The Montgomery Ward store — the chain's first San Antonio location — was the anchor tenant, occupying the mall's largest space, 150,000 square feet, on two levels.

Besides local retail luminaries Paris Hatters and Satel's, the original directory shows many familiar but bygone retail names: F.W. Woolworth's, Sommers Drugs, Winn's, a Sinclair service station and Handy Andy supermarket, the mall's other first big tenant at 66,000 square feet.

The grocery store, part of a now-defunct chain, was the first structure built on the mall's 65-acre site, opening in May 1959 as a free-standing building with a split-level design, later incorporated into the mall. Ward's and Handy Andy seem to have been at opposite ends, drawing customers from different directions with huge neon signs that were lit long before the mall opened.

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“Name a superlative, and Wonderland has been aptly described,” said an advance story in the San Antonio Light's Sept. 13, 1961, special section about the mall's three-day grand opening, starting with the “world's largest ribbon cutting with the world's largest shears.”

At the time, the U-shaped mall was the city's newest and largest, as well as its most costly to build, at an estimated $7 million. It also was said to be the most modern, all-air-conditioned mall with new features such as storage lockers for shoppers, a Town Hall for community meetings and the Cinemoppet theater, where parents could park their youngsters to watch cartoons under the supervision of matrons from the Balcones Heights Volunteer Fire Department Auxiliary.

Some of the early tenants weren't retailers; there were a few corporate offices and a jewelry manufacturer along with 30 shops, presumably to boost occupancy by the time of the grand opening, since they weren't there a couple of years later.

A few years later, Wonderland's Rhodes department store, “on the expressway side” of the mall, was heralded with a dynamite blast “symbolizing the start of construction,” followed by fireworks, says the San Antonio Express and News, March 17, 1963. Emphasizing “fashions for the family and the home,” Rhodes opened the next year.

Tandy's also came to the 1963 expansion, starting with a shop for Western wear. The Tandy Center, incorporating Tandy Leather, Tandy's Fun Shop and Tandy's Beauty Salon by the early 1970s, was “in the heart of Wonderland's lower level,” but the shops featuring the Tandy name weren't contiguous.

Like Rhodes and Tandy's, Pancho's, presumably a restaurant in the Pancho's Mexican Buffet chain, wasn't among Wonderland's original tenants. In the early days of malls, restaurants Piccadilly Cafeteria and Mr. Checkers were tenants at Wonderland. Sommers Drugs had a soda fountain, and Woolworth's had a lunch counter.

By 1970, there was a Pancho's at 13662 Fredericksburg Road in the Northwest Shopping Center, which preceded Wonderland in a nearby location; could that be the one you remember? As free-standing stores were built between the earlier center and the mall, they virtually grew together into a single shopping area.

Readers who remember the original Wonderland layout might write with memories of the layout and these stores. All responses will be forwarded and might be shared in a future column.

Email Paula Allen at historycolumn@yahoo.com. Follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/sahistorycolumn.